After forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai, the prophet Moses received directly from the hands of Yahweh a list of orders or commandments that the Israelites, those who consider themselves good professionals, had to obey. This list was called:
The 10 commandments
1.-You shall love God above all things. Google is God: omnipresent and omnipotent. The company founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which started out as an efficient search engine ranking results hierarchically by number of visits, has today become a conglomerate of products and services you’ll need to know, study and analyze if you want to get anywhere in the world of SEO and SEM.
2.-You shall not take the name of God in vain. God is Google because, thanks to this web of products and services, anyone with an online store, website or blog will have to give in and come to terms with Google if they want to rank in search results or make their property more visible, with the ultimate aim of selling or promoting their product or brand (branding).
3.-You shall keep the holy days. You shall celebrate and value each and every certification (AdWords, Analytics, YouTube) you’ve earned through study and effort, because they give you the knowledge you need to manage your online marketing and eCommerce activities.
4.-You shall honor your father and mother. Through your actions and work you shall honor your father (the company you work for, if you’re an employee) and your mother (those friend-clients who put food on your table by hiring SEO and SEM services).
5.-You shall not kill. There’s no need to discredit or belittle the work of other industry professionals or competitors to do your own online marketing and eCommerce work. Everyone has their own path. It’s the results you achieve and how you treat your friend-clients that will give your work its value.
6.-You shall not commit impure acts. You shall not cross over to the dark side and use black hat techniques, because it’s only a matter of time before Matt Cutts and Google’s Webspam team detect them and penalize your online store, website or blog.
7.-You shall not steal. There’s nothing wrong with building on other people’s work, but credit the author. Take risks and be creative, original and innovative. Don’t copy and paste. Who says you have to follow the established rules? Contribute to the evolution of the internet and marketing.
8.-You shall not bear false witness. Product and service reviews can be a great help in improving them and in the decision-making of many users and potential friend-clients. What’s the point of lying? It only makes people distrust reviews. In the end we’ll only be able to trust our friends and acquaintances, because we’ll believe everything on the internet is a lie.
9.-You shall not entertain impure thoughts or desires. Even when results take time to show. Be consistent, work hard, keep learning and give it your all. Believe in yourself and the work you’re doing. In the long run, it will pay off. There may be faster, easier paths to your goals, but the harder they are to reach, the more you’ll value them when the results arrive.
10.-You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. Be realistic. Certain search positions, engagement levels or sales figures will be hard for your online store, website or blog to reach. There’s always someone with more resources than you whom you’ll never be able to compete with on equal terms. Still, know what you’re capable of and don’t give up. Ambition, in the right measure, isn’t a bad thing.
Sinful humanity needed this revelation. If, like Moses, you want to spread these 10 precepts, feel free to share this post on any social network (times have changed), and if you want to show your gratitude for this revelation, prove it with a “like” or a +1
If you do so: brothers and sisters, go in peace.
